故

Phono-semantic compound:

攴 (strike, action radical) - semantic element, related to events or actions.

古 (old, ancient) - phonetic element “고.”

Original sense: “reason, cause of an event,” later extended to “affair,” “incident,” and by euphemism “death.”

故人 (고인) — the deceased, “the late …”

事故 (사고) — accident, incident

故鄕 (고향) — hometown, native place

故國 (고국) — native country, homeland

原故 (원고) — reason, cause

無故 (무고) — without cause, falsely, unjustly

In Korean usage, 故 most commonly appears in the euphemism for the dead (故人). Newspapers and memorial contexts almost exclusively use it with this meaning.

In Classical Chinese, 故 often marked “therefore, thus,” functioning as a conjunction: e.g., 故曰… (“Therefore it is said…”).

The “old” sense of 故 is still alive in compounds like 故鄕 (“old village, hometown”).